Anybody changing their minds about LinkedIn Endorsements?......

When LI endorsements first appeared, and I received my first endorsement from somebody who was unqualified to have an opinion, I became indignant. So much so, I had a good moan on my blog and claimed LinkedIn had just had a foot-in-mouth moment:

3 months have passed and I have to admit my view has softened a little:

I'm still being endorsed by people who are unqualified to do so, but it's now reaching a scale where I'm guessing that this is happening to broadly the same degree to everybodies profiles, so the errors are now evening themselves out and the inconsistencies are at least more or less consistent - if you know what I mean.

I have also noticed an opportunity to be noticed by being rather 'different', so I have now, without any prompting, managed to get endorsements for "Good Egg", "Cantankerous", "Simple", "Unorthodox" and "Regular Super Hero". Perhaps I'm just slightly odd after all.......

This pales into insignificance when compared to one connection, who is a real marketing person, who has listed only one skill and been endorsed 32 times for "Beard Growing and Maintenance". When I saw that, my opinion of that individual grew a little rather than diminished.

So while I'm still quite sure Endorsements are NOT an accurate indication of any individuals skills, they do contain a grain of truth, and if somebody has 200 connections and no (or few) Endorsements, then there's a reasonable chance they've had a totally successful charisma bi-pass operation.

....and perhaps we sometimes take everything too seriously all the time.

James Raybould, Director of Insights for LinkedIn recently discussed endorsements at an event hosted by SmartRecruiters. It was interesting to hear the views of both audience members and a LinkedIn executive. I'm excited to see if endorsements become a legitimate way to rate job candidates.